A known seat apparatus for a vehicle is disclosed in JP2009-241774A (which is hereinafter referred to as Patent reference 1). The known vehicle seat apparatus disclosed in Patent reference 1 includes a control portion which determines a build of an occupant seated on a vehicle seat by means of a camera apparatus mounted on a door mirror of the vehicle and moves a seating surface of the vehicle seat to a position that is suitable for the occupant to get off the vehicle on the basis of the build of the occupant detected from an image data taken by the camera apparatus in a case where a movement of the occupant to get off the vehicle is predicted. As the control portion performs a drive control of the seating surface of the seat, a stressed feeling that the occupant may have during getting off the vehicle is reduced and ease of the occupant's egress from the vehicle is enhanced.
According to the known vehicle seat apparatus disclosed in Patent reference 1, however, the control portion determines the build of the occupant on the basis of the image data taken by the camera apparatus. Accordingly, the control portion needs to perform complicated processing in order to determine the build of the occupant from the image data, and therefore a high-performance control portion is required. In addition, the camera apparatus needs to be separately provided at the door mirror for build determination of the occupant, which may increase overall costs of the seat apparatus.
A need thus exists for a seat apparatus for a vehicle, which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.